


Finding the Answers in Lines Between Stars

by imdeansgirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Atheism, Atheist Character, F/F, Hunter!Kevin, M/M, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Role Reversal, slight depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 13:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3651279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imdeansgirl/pseuds/imdeansgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is twenty-one when his entire life changes.</p><p>~_~</p><p>Sam's life is drastically altered when he meets Kevin; a boy with stars in his eyes and a knowledge of the impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding the Answers in Lines Between Stars

Sam is only a year old when his mother dies.

It’s a quiet night in the Winchester house when the news is broken. Bobby stumbles off the couch where he’d been sleeping, both of the boys having finally gone to bed a mere hour ago. Bobby holds the phone as John sobs into his ear from the other end. When he hangs up, he wakes up Dean and holds him as he weeps into the lateness of the night.

Sam is too young to remember any of it.

~-~

Sam is six years old when he learns to hate the word _cancer._

It’s the short answer a ten-year-old Dean gives when Sam asks where their mother is, and why Dean prays to her every night. They’ve just moved into a new house, and John’s either drowning himself in beer down at the local bar or at the next door neighbor’s house. (Their neighbor’s name is Kate. She smells like pie and antiseptic. Sam likes Kate.)

Pressing further, Sam asks what cancer is. Dean shrugs. He also asks why their mom had it, not their dad or anyone else they knew.

Dean shrugs again, but this time he says: “Sometimes God just gets tired of people living, Sammy.”

Sam never asks about cancer again. Dean never bothers to tell him.

~-~

Sam is twelve and is officially giving up on God.

He never answered Sam, so he’s pretty sure He’s not real. And if He is real, He’s a douchebag. He never gave Sam any friends. He never let them stay in one place for more than a year. He never pulled his father up out of the gutter and actually made him be a parent. The only good thing He’s ever given Sam is Dean, a player with a mischievous glint to his eye and a crooked smile. Dean reels people in and dumps them. But he’s never done that to Sam. He’s always been there for him when Sam’s needed him. But that’s on Dean. Not any god.

He gathers his Bible and crosses and rosaries and burns them. He’s not technically allowed to play with fire, and he’s sure he’s not supposed to be burning religious things, but it feels symbolic and peaceful. Dean finds him in the backyard and stands next to him, watching the fire burn away. “What’s that?” he asks eventually, nodding to the fire.

Sam shrugs. “Nothing important,” he lies. Dean doesn’t press it, just puts out the fire and leads him back inside.

~-~

Sam is fourteen when Dean leaves.

He doesn’t tell Sam much. Just that he’s got a place to go, he’s not just gonna wander around like their dad. Sam says he remembers a time when Dean wanted to be just like their dad. Dean flinches. He doesn’t respond.

He leaves in the middle of the night. He presses a quick kiss to Sam’s forehead and just goes, the headlights of his car dying out as he heads down the drive and into the street, and eventually onto the highway.

A text from Dean vibrates through Sam’s phone four days later.

Sam doesn’t respond.

~-~

Sam’s seventeen and his dad dies.

It’s not a big deal. Sam and his dad were never close. He always thought that, somehow, John blamed Sam for his mother’s death. Sometimes Sam blamed himself. Though it seemed to be a thought they shared, it kept them distant.

Dean shows for the funeral. He’s twenty-two. It’s the first real, proper time Sam’s seen him in almost four years. He’s much older, clean-shaven as he walks to Sam on shaky, bowed legs and hugs him. Dean cries. Sam doesn’t.

Together, with Bobby, their neighbor Missouri (a good friend of John’s), and her foster daughter Jo, they plan John’s funeral. Sam feels nothing. Just a light buzz in the distance reminding him all his father’s possessions are his own—his house, his car. But even though he now owns everything his father left behind, the buzz is clawing at the back of his skull, screaming at him four little words: _you have nothing left._

Court-mandated, Sam is shipped off to live with Dean and Dean’s boyfriend. He doesn’t bother unpacking his stuff, though both Dean and Benny offer to help him several times; he takes things from boxes when he needs them, and places them back neatly when he’s done.

He’s eighteen when he takes the boxes and leaves, never pausing to look back.

~-~

Sam is twenty-one when his entire life changes.

He can hear Brady, taking quick, fearful breaths, though he can’t see him through the black darkness. He doesn’t know if the thing they saw earlier is still lurking in the small room—the thing that left claw marks on their door, and left a blood trail in the hallway, and probably killed their friends. _Killed their friends._ Andy, Ava—God, the entire family Sam’s known for _three years._ They would never get their law degrees. They would never walk down the aisle at graduation. Ava, with her big bright eyes and her flawless smile and not a care in the world as she strived to become a lawyer _just like her dad,_ so she could make him proud. Andy, who had too many drugs and not enough drive, shrugging as he insisted he just needed to buy _one more term paper,_ then he could do the rest on his own. Jake, with his serious demeanor and the world on his shoulders and a strictly maintained schedule, telling his roommate Andy to _get your feet of the coffee table, we’re civilized people_. Dead, they were _dead,_ and he _saw it happen._

He saw the light go out in Ava’s bright eyes.

He saw Andy’s drug-tainted lungs take their last breath.

He saw Jake cry out for help, his face tear-streaked and his voice hoarse with desperation as he reached for Sam, Brady, anyone—

Sam saw too much.

And he knows Brady saw it too; saw the monster slice a spindly claw through their friends’ stomachs, and gave them a malicious glare, telling them _you’re next,_ preparing to tear through skin and organs for the satisfaction of making it through to the other side, and—and god knows what else. Would it eat them? Was it already eating his friends? At the thought of half-masticated bodies and bite marks on otherwise clean skin, bile claws its way up Sam’s throat; he opens his mouth and heaves. Nothing comes out.

He’s clutching the edge of the desk he’s hiding behind, his knuckles going white from their hard grip. The darkness surrounds him, envelopes him like a heavy and suffocating blanket; he can’t see anything, can only _hear_ the hiss and rattling of a snake as it, the monster, works its way through the room, looking for something to kill, and now he knows that the thing is still here, or at least close enough for him to hear, and he prepares to die—he mentally sends out a half-prayer half-apology to Dean and Bobby and even Benny, telling them he’s sorry for never treating them how he should have—but then it happens.

The lights appear out of the darkness. They approach him cautiously, as if not to scare him off.

The only problem with that is that Sam is terrified. 

(He can’t hear Brady’s shallow, fearful breathing anymore. He didn’t hear a piercing scream shake the dorm room, so Brady may have left the room. Sam hopes he left the room.)

Light pours onto his face, and he squints into the source, his eyes trying desperately to adjust to the sudden lighting change. A hand is held down to him, and he takes it—he’d take anything at this point, honestly—and stands. The hand belongs to a boy, with shaggy black hair and big brown eyes, who can’t be much younger than he is. He smiles at Sam, and speaks. “Come with me if you want to live,” he jokes, but Sam hears an underlying seriousness, sees the look in the boy’s eyes, and goes.

He follows the boy out of the dorm building, and the other light sources—one a girl with black hair and sharp eyes, and the other a blonde nervously pulling her lip between her teeth—follow closely behind. From somewhere in the distance, he hears the noises of an altercation—shouting, clanging, gun shots—and wonders if Brady is caught in the crossfire.

He stops again, and this time, he does vomit.

The boy doesn’t mind, just keeps pulling him along by the hand (even when the blonde girl wrinkles her nose and the brunette mutters something along the lines of ‘you _must_ be kidding me’) until they reach the outside, where he shoves him unceremoniously into the front seat of an old, beat up Camaro. The boy climbs into the front seat, and the two girls fall into the backseat. The blonde one leans over and asks, “What was that?”

“Kanima,” the boy answers, shaking his flashlight. “They’ve found its master, I think, so all they need to do is kill them or reform them and we’ll be set.”

He moves to turn the key in the ignition, but the blonde stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “What about Linda?”

The boy’s posture straightens a bit, as if defensive. “She knows what she’s doing,” the boy answers gruffly. “This isn’t her first rodeo, you know?” He bristles and settles back into a slumping position. “Besides, Pamela is with her.”

Then the other one leans over, too, and points at Sam. “What’re we gonna do about the kid?”

They all look over at him now, eyes unblinking as they survey him. He feels a bit like an animal on display, but he is too sick and tired and emotionally exhausted to care. His mouth tastes like blood and vomit, and he wonders if they’ll let him out when he needs to puke again.

All the sudden, a soft hand is touching his wrist, and he looks up to see the boy giving him a tender look. He asks Sam, softly, “What’s your name?”

Sam clears his hoarse throat. “Sam,” he answers drily. It’s the first word he’s spoken in hours that wasn’t a scream or a beg for mercy. His own name feels foreign after the ordeal, and he swallows with a dry throat and watery eyes.

“Sam,” the boy nods. “That’s a nice name.” He brings his other hand—the hand that’s not tracing the tender veins on Sam’s wrist—to point at his chest. “I’m Kevin,” he says. He points to the dark, biting girl, who gives him a saucy smile. “This is Meg.”

She reaches up and tips an imaginary hat. “Howdy,” she says.

Kevin nods over his shoulder at the blonde and announces, “And that’s Jess.”

Jess reaches up and places a hand on his shoulder, smiling. “Hi, Sam,” she says sweetly, and she reminds him of Ava, and his heart aches.

“Sam,” Kevin says, drawing his attention away from Jess. He’s looking at Sam tenderly and carefully, with bright eyes. “Would you like to come with us?”

And he can’t think of a reason why not. So he does.

~-~

Sam is twenty-two and he finds a place to belong.

Kevin’s mother, Linda, adopted him into their small group with ease. She made a joke about Kevin bringing home strays, which everyone laughed at but Sam, and told Sam he was welcome to stay, which he did. He really had nowhere else to go; all of his friends had died (and he can’t go a day without thinking about it, without thinking that if he had known about hunting sooner he could have stopped it, without thinking _BradyAvaJakeAndydeadmyfaultdeadmyfault_ ) and he had cut ties with his brother at eighteen, so he was an orphan with no skills to contribute. But, he’d said to Kevin at the makeshift dinner the night he came with them, he could try.

He became skilled in translation, one of the few things their small group lacked. He read Latin fluently, and mastered Greek and Chinese as well. Kevin trained him to fight, and Jess showed him technology, and Meg went over his weaponry with him, and he went out on hunts (a vampire then a werewolf and then a wendigo and then he lost track, the monsters blurring together as easily as months and days and hours do) and saved the day and he, eventually, belongs, just like a missing piece of a small puzzle. 

He gets his own bed at every hotel they travel to, usually next to Kevin’s, even if he doesn’t sleep much—too many nightmares, too often, too violent. He stays up and listens to the creaking of floorboards or the whistling of the wind, and sometimes he’ll wander the hotel with no real purpose. And sometimes that will lead to running into Meg, who’s wearing short shorts and Jess’ pajama shirt thrown loosely around her shoulders, and they’ll wander the halls together until Meg runs out of energy or things to keep herself numb—whichever comes first—and goes back to bed to wrap herself around Jess and try and forget. Sam goes back to his own and tries to block the images of dead people out of his mind. It doesn’t work.

He also gets his own spot in the family van—all the way in the back, next to Jess, who shares her music with him and laughs while Meg and Kevin bicker in the middle seats and Linda and Pamela yell from up front. Jess’ laugh isn’t hollow, like Meg’s is sometimes, or uneasy like Kevin’s can be, or tinged with sadness and, frankly, rare, like his own. Hers is brighter and more real than all of the stars in the sky, and it sounds like wind chimes on a breezy summer day. She is bottled sunshine, and Sam is more than willing to soak up the happiness and warmth she gives away like candy.

The spot he has in Kevin’s Camaro, though, is different than in the van. When Linda and Pamela go their own way, and Kevin is left to lead them into their own battle, they take Kevin’s old car, and the two girls sit close together in the back and Kevin drives and Sam slots into the front seat like he belongs there, like he’s always been there, and nobody says a word. Sam picks the music, and Kevin smiles when he approves, and Jess hangs over the front of the seat to croon along to the songs, and Meg grips her waist and laughs as the blonde falls into the brunette’s lap and tries to squirm away. And Kevin will stare at him, like he’s more important than the road, like he’s more important than a lot of things, and Sam can’t bring himself to mind, even if they’re on the way to fight yet another impossible monster.

~-~

Sam’s twenty-four when he loses another friend.

The demon is dead, now, lying on the floor, a hole in her—its—side from where Kevin slammed the knife in. Only a few feet away, Jess kneels on the floor, sobbing quietly as she cradles Meg’s head in her lap, whispering softly, telling Meg that Linda isn’t far, she’ll be fine soon. Meg laughs, as Meg always does, and shushes her, trying to calm her. Kevin kneels, too; he doesn’t touch Meg, but cries beside her, his shoulders shaking with his grief. Sam places a hand on his shoulder and averts his eyes. He’s known Meg for three long years, but it seems like this is Jess’ moment, if anyone’s. And though he hasn’t cried in a long time—not since a kanima stole his friends away three years ago, and before that not since Dean left—he resolves that he will mourn Meg Masters later, with proper tears, when she can’t tell him to shut up and woman up.

A pale hand snakes up to cup Jess’ face, and Meg is surprisingly calm for someone who’s dying, he thinks, bleeding out of her stomach from a few deep knife wounds. Her blood is staining Jess’ clothes and the floor, and he knows he’s probably not being a great friend, already resigning himself to the fact that she is as good as dead, but he knows it’s true, and, from the way she’s saying goodbye to Jess, Meg does as well. She removes the hand from the blonde’s face to grab Kevin’s hand, then Sam’s. “Thank you, guys,” she says, smiling at them, and it’s still as hollow as ever but it’s as carefree as Sam has ever—and will ever, he supposes—seen her. “I would say take care of her, but hell, we all know she takes care of herself _and_ you both just fine.”

“Stop talking like you’re dying,” Kevin grits out, grabbing and squeezing her hand before letting go. It falls limp to her side. “You’re not dead yet.”

Meg chuckles and grasps at her shirt, yanking at the bloody and sticky cloth. “Dead woman walking,” she says with a shrug. “Or, really, laying down.”

After a few more words said in hushed tones to Jess, her eyes go blank and unmoving, staring up at the warehouse ceiling. Jess’ sobs wrack her body. Kevin grips the hand Sam left on his shoulder. Sam reaches down and closes dead, brown eyes.

Jess is depressed for a while after that. Anyone would be, he supposes, when they watch someone they love that much die. Instead of laughing and sharing her music, she stares out windows and only speak when it’s necessary. She puts all her energy into fighting monsters, destroying them with violence and hatred Sam never thought her capable of. He wasn’t aware that all that passion and life could turn to darkness and bitterness. But it does.

Kevin insists he’s fine, and carries on as if all is normal. He ignores Jess’ depression, and jokes and bickers like nothing has changed. But it has, and Sam can tell, in the way the bright smile no longer reaches Kevin’s eyes, and how he doesn’t sing along to the radio as loudly without Jess and Meg to do it with him, and how he doesn’t sleep as well as night. 

(Sam can tell he leaves the room, because he’s lying awake, too, waiting for a peacefulness that doesn’t come, and a nighttime walk with a dead girl that used to soothe his ragged nerves. That time he used to spend with the bitter, snarky huntress seems like too long ago, like a memory he can’t grasp anymore. It aches to try and think about it, and he wasn’t with her as long as Jess and Kevin, but it still _hurts,_ like a fresh wound. She’s just _gone,_ and he’s known that, but it feels like there’s a hole—in the middle of the van, next to him during a hunt, in the backseat of the Camaro; Jess still refuses to sit on the left side, insisting she’d rather sit in back of Kevin “for the leg room.” They all know better; they’re well-aware that that’s Meg’s spot, and it’d be wrong for someone to sit there, but they don’t correct her. They just nod and carry on.)

He knows Kevin isn’t doing well one night especially. Dark is streaming through the closed window, and it must be a few hours past midnight now. They’re in a hotel in Virginia; Jess is in the room next door, and he can hear her crying. He rolls over, pressing his ear against a pillow to block out the noise, block out the emotions, only to see the bed next to him is empty. He sighs and stands, stretching long limbs over his head before walking outside, only to find Kevin sitting on the staircase outside their room. Sam folds his long limbs in to sit down next to him, and they stay like that for a while, both staring up at the star-filled night sky. 

Eventually, though, Kevin breaks the peaceful silence. “Why’d she have to go, Sam?” he asks softly. He turns to Sam with wide, brown eyes. Though most of the time he seems almost as if he’s older than Sam, right now, with the fluorescent light of the motel sign bathing down on his face and his eyes glassy with unshed tears, he looks uncharacteristically young. He looks like all the wisdom and experience he’s gained over the years has gone, his usually sunshine demeanor faded and replaced with hard stone (and god, Sam would give anything to get Kevin’s warm personality back, his crinkly smiles and stupid jokes and singing along with the music, but he doesn’t know _how_ ) _._ “There was so much for her here.”

And Sam doesn’t know the answer to the question. He’s asked the same question all his life, along with a million others about why everyone keeps leaving him and where they go after and _why do they have to go so soon,_ but he never got any answers. Except one. So he remembers the one answer he got years and years ago. He shrugs and says, “Sometimes God gets tired of people living.”

It didn’t placate him when he was six, and it doesn’t seem to fully satisfy Kevin now, but it seems to be the right answer, since he nods and looks back out into the sky, as if all the answers are lost between the connections of the constellations. Sam wonders if he can make constellations in Kevin’s eyes and find the answers there, since he finds them more captivating than any dipper or lion he could see with a telescope. Kevin huffs, and rubs his face with the hand farthest from Sam, as if he might rub away the memories or the deaths or the monsters. He sighs. “I just don’t get why people keep leaving.”

He doesn’t really know if it’s the right thing to do, or if it should even be an option, but he reaches over and takes the hand closes to him and interlocks their fingers. “I’m still here,” he offers, as if his being is a consolation prize for Meg’s death or the fact that they haven’t heard from Linda in a few days or Jess’ huge loss.

But Kevin smiles, crinkly and big and bright, and perhaps he isn’t a consolation, but something necessary.

~-~

Sam is twenty-five, and Kevin kisses exactly how he fights.

It’s nearing the year anniversary of Meg’s death. Jess has regained herself a little more; she jokes again, and laughs sometimes, though it’s hollow and sad and broken (Sam was supposed to be the broken one, and he doesn’t know how this happened). She still fights with an alarming ferocity as wrath courses through her veins; it’s as if she carries Meg’s death with her, a reminder that she cannot let the monsters win, that she is the stronger one. He doesn’t know if this driving force is a good thing or a bad thing, but he lets it go as he does most things Jess does these days.

They go after a pack of vampires, and Jess and Sam take the main part of the factory while Kevin works the smaller room off to the side. There are a lot of them, but with Jess’ drive and Sam’s fighting techniques (and he learned them from Meg, and he can’t help but feel she’d be proud as he swung the deadly weapon around him, driving it into the necks of supernatural creatures), they are slaughtered in ten minutes or so, and Sam can’t help but think it was too easy, but he takes it.

When the battle is over and won, every vampire either slayed or having had retreated, Jess and Sam stand together, both panting, their clothing sticking to every part of their bodies. Sam heaves a sigh and begins to ask where Kevin is, when the door slams open with a clang and he barges in, a hoard of vampires with him.

Jess leaps into action, swinging her cleaver with purpose, but for a moment Sam is frozen to the spot, watching Kevin maneuvering his sword in a way that is both terrifying and beautiful, haunting and exquisite. He amazes Sam, because he is never more beautiful than when he is passionate, and fighting brings out the passion within him, makes him confident and elegant and handsome, and Sam sometimes has the ridiculous thought that he could watch Kevin do a million things (like fighting, but also like combing his hair or taking out trash or working on his Camaro) until the end of time and never tire of it. 

The moment he is still, a vampire sees this as a weak point and uses it as an advantage. He—it, it is an it, Sam, remember, don’t let it become human to you—it comes at his neck with teeth showing, white with angry red stains on the tips. Sam brings his blade up, and swings for its neck and misses. It launches itself again, and Sam prepares for death once more when a sticky liquid sprays his face. He reaches up to wipe away the blood, and makes grateful eye contact with Jess before turning on another vampire and swinging again.

When the last vampire falls, Kevin immediately turns to Sam, anger prominent on his striking features.

“Are you _kidding_?” he asks, barging up to Sam. His tone is frustrated, and Sam flinches. Kevin either does not notice, or pretends not to. “You could have been _killed_!”

And though he doesn’t want to make the fight go farther, and he knows Kevin has reasons for his exasperation, he feels the need to point out, “But I wasn’t.” He stands at full height, looming over Kevin. Jess quietly leaves, sensing this is a fight brewing, closing the door behind her with a clang. They are left in silence, until Sam, still indignant, breaks it by saying, “I can hold my own, Kev. I’m not a kid.”

Kevin stares up at him, looking angry and exhausted and incredulous all at once. “ _Are_ _you_ _stupid_?” he asks. “That’s _not_ the point!”

Sam throws his hands up. “Then what _is_ the—“

And Kevin grabs him by the collar and drags him downwards until their mouths are pressed together, and they’re kissing, and Kevin kisses exactly as he fights—fiery, urge and intent behind _every movement,_ breaking down barriers and mowing down everything in his path. He is fire, and even caked in the blood of vampires and drowning in the rusty smell of the abandoned factory they’re in, he instills a feeling of hunger in Sam, weakens his knees and opens up his mouth. And their teeth clack together and it’s painful, but so is life, and he kind of thinks something about this is all a little ironic, but he isn’t quite sure what.

Kevin is the first to pull back, but he’s still on tiptoes, so he rests his forehead against Sam’s. “I can’t,” he begins, sounding squeaky and high, then he clears his throat, and he tries again. “I can’t lose you too,” he says, and behind the words there is a question, some sort of desperation, some sort of _please,_ and Sam isn’t sure what he’s agreeing to, but he nods all the same, because he knows _he wants it too,_ because wherever this boy goes—this fiery, driven boy, with big brown eyes that hold constellations, and a beat up old car that holds so many memories, along with the ghost of a long dead girl and the ghost of a girl who is still breathing but is so broken inside she is held together with rubber bands and elastic—he will follow.

~-~

Sam is twenty-six and he watches sunlight stream through the window onto Kevin’s face.

Kevin wakes up the same way every morning, with a snort and then a wrinkle of his nose and then a long yawn, and he only knows because he wakes up earlier than Kevin every morning, and that’s because getting the other out of bed is a struggle. He usually only gets up with the promise of eggs made by either he or Jess, and coffee first thing in the morning. “I don’t do mornings,” he mumbles as Sam wraps his arms around his waist and presses his face into black hair. Jess makes a gagging noise and mutters about keeping the PDA to a minimum before sipping her tea. 

At the end of their breakfast, Jess packs up and heads out for her daily classes, kissing both boys on the top of their heads. Its Sam’s day off from the Pets’ Place he works at, and Kevin’s classes don’t start until next week, so they curl together on the couch, Kevin nestled in between Sam’s legs as he channel surfs. And Sam watches his long fingers curl around the remote, and listens to Kevin ask if he’s thought about giving Dean a call, and looks as the sunlight pours into the room onto tanned skin, and nuzzles into the back of Kevin’s neck and sighs, thinking about his brother and his father and Meg Masters and the two ex-hunters he now lives with. He’s made it a very, very long way.

Sam is twenty-six and he is finally at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> hey, if you read this all the way through, i'm so proud of you. i don't know, i just kind of got sad and decided to write about a sad sam living through a lot of trauma. i'm sorry. i made myself sad while writing this idk. i half-hate it--how it's written and all. as always, reviews are welcome and appreciated and... yeah. thanks!


End file.
